Food Planning And Meal Prep

Using My Smol Brain Power

If you’ve never been the one to figure out the weekly meal list, do the grocery list for said meals or cooked it all there’s a chance you’ve not considered the amount of mental energy as well as physical energy put into the process. The evening meal you consume at your family dinner table doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.

I grew up in a household where meals were planned out. They had to be. Money was super tight and the budget was the budget. It wasn’t a case of I don’t want to go over X amount but a case of if it goes over X amount we have to put something back. A lot of people say that but I have two core memories that stick with me so often.

• Growing up in the UK there were a lot of small to medium grocery stores, or as we call them supermarkets, around but the big “superstores” where they had all their own value brands were noticeably more sporadic. At one point we lived an hours drive away from one and we left a couple of bags at the checkout without realizing until we got home (when I say we I mean around ten year old me and I got into a shit load of trouble for it). It was cheaper for one of my parents to drive all the way back there to get them, after ringing to check they were indeed handed in etc, and bring them back than to simply “go buy the stuff from another store”. I can’t remember what was even in the bags but I do know it was all the super basic store own brand. And the car had the fuel in it. The bank balance wouldn’t have allowed for the items to be repurchased even if it was easier.
• When my parents split and I was still living at home I went to the store with one of them. But only after having to get an emergency loan from the local jobcentre for £20 which would then be taken out of the money they received the following week (the split was pretty sudden, one parent took the car and the other parent hadn’t been working because they were car takers “full time caregiver” in the eyes of the government so we literally became a £0 income and £0 haver household basically overnight. And I walked around that store and mental math-ed every single item down to the penny.

But the only way that it was possible to stay so tightly within budget was to have the meals planned out really precisely in advance. And I mean to the exact quantity needed for each item; need 450g of something? How can we get that amount for the smallest amount of currency? Could we possibly get the bag that was just over double that weight to “save” in the future or would that topple the budget? Buy fruit and vegetables individually by weight to make sure there was absolutely no waste.

And that is a mindset that is hard to break. Even during a time when I could, and sometimes did, walk into a Central London department store to buy ingredients and various supplies there was a part of me that made me feel bad and guilty about it. Some would call it frugality but it is also a sense of being conditioned; Even when you escape the cycle you still feel guilty about it because how could you dare to live any other way?

That still stands now too; I figure out food plans for a fortnight ahead of grocery shopping in the exact same way. If I don’t cook those meals I feel incredibly stressed, not just because cooking is therapeutic to me but because I worry that ingredients will go bad or that I cannot use them another way. It then becomes a waste not just for my household the grocery budget but also wasted resources that somebody else could have savored and enjoyed.

So how do I manage this in the most time efficient and mental saving way?

• Whenever we run out of something I add it to the list in advance. I know that if we don’t have any of it left that I wont remember when looking through the kitchen next time.
• Before figuring out a meal plan I look to see what we still have more of available and work around it to minimize the purchases required. The issue with this is that some weeks are therefore much lower on the items required but then supplies all seem to run out at the same time.
• In the UK, more so in the US, there are a lot of stores that have ‘store cards’ but not in the sense of credit cards more like gift cards. You can put funds onto them and in whatever amount you want which can be useful for shopping on ‘harder’ weeks, getting extra things like birthday or Christmas supplies and so on. We would always do it so if the budget was a certain amount we would round it out to that amount on the card this allowed us to sometimes buy something in bulk that helped save money overall but that we wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.
• I double check to see if people are aware of any upcoming plans over the next grocery shopping period that means they might be getting lunch or dinner in another way that means cooking food for that evening or calculating things like the amount of bread or cucumber for lunches will not be needed. This helps ensure waste is reduced and that the budget can be put elsewhere instead.
• Whilst there are certain supplies that it is useful to have on backup there are specific items that I try to avoid getting in multiples; Things that people go through phases with, have a short life or things that are only specifically for one people. There was a time when I would stock up on things, especially limited edition items or treat items (to most people ‘snacks’ but when you grow up with those being a literal “hey do you want this single chocolate bar?” or “shall we get this bottle of own brand soda?” once every few weeks they are definitely treat items in my head!), but now if there is enough of those already around for at least the next grocery period then I avoid it.
• I focus on getting things that are versatile. An example of this is cream cheese; It can be used for lunches and all those things but beyond that I tend to use it in place of other dairy products to make a white/cheese sauce for certain meals. This also makes it easier to get the ‘cheaper’ unbranded versions because most of it will be going into cooking; That and let us be real there are only actually a few products where brand is different to off brand (most items are made in the same factory, just packaged and sold at different price points). brand snobbery pisses me the hell off but that is a discussion for another day.
• I will make the extra effort, even though it involves more thinking energy and physical energy as well as time, to make my own sauce from base ingredients. Something like making my own tomato sauce can be done for at least half the price of even a stores own brand of a pre-made version and because you know exactly what you are putting into it you are able to adapt it accordingly for each meals flavour profile.
• The hardest bit is finding meals to cook that people will enjoy, don’t cost a lot, have nutritional value and aren’t just repeating them week in and week out like it is some sort of school or work canteen situation. And this is where the real thinking and planning comes in to make sure that there isn’t a rice meal two days in a row, scrolling through recipe sites and social media to come up with new ideas and then sharing those with people to see if it is an okay concept. It becomes difficult though because a lot of the most enjoyable meals would cost that little bit extra; Are they worth the risk? Considering all these things for every single meal of every single day of the year becomes a mental drain so if you don’t have to then I can understand why you choose not to but think how much money you are wasting next time you “wish” you could buy a more luxury item outright or go and do an in real life experience.
• After making a new meal, especially if it comes from a recipe I’ve seen online, I pop it in a group thread and hope that people will shall the mental burden just a little bit by simply throwing up one of the pre-assigned emote responses to it for if they would want it again. If it was “okay” then in a dream situation they will take the time to elaborate on that and express how it could be made a little bit better if it was to be done again.

How do you try to share the load of meal planning with people? Where do you find inspiration? How do you keep the list and cost down as much as possible?